Midges may be small, but in many streams and lakes around the world they are the most important year-round food source for trout. Rick Takahashi and Jerry Hubka team up to provide readers with the most comprehensive midge pattern and fishing techniques resource to date. Stunning photos and detailed illustrations show the life cycle of the naturals, fishing and rigging techniques for a wide range of waters, and over 1,000 midge patterns. Whether you tie or buy your flies, this collection of cutting-edge advice from experts around the world will help you catch more fish. First comprehensive book of contemporary midge patterns Over 1,000 midge patterns and recipes from around the world, including the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, and Canada Tying steps for 15 essential pattern styles plus fishing techniques, tips, and tricks from experts on rivers and stillwaters
Midge larvae and pupae, tiny parachutes, floating nymphs, micro scuds, tiny ants. Choosing the right hook, thread, wire, and amount of weight for small flies plus 75 patterns, including Brassie, RS-2, Renegade, Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear, Griffith's Gnat. Foreword by John Gierach.
A bucket list of top destinations in the US for trophy trout, featuring interviews with local guides, stunning images, and essential where-to and timing information. Landon Mayer describes in detail water systems from Alaska to Maine, revealing what makes each unique; where, when, and how to fish it; and what flies to use there, as well as how to tie them. With essential advice and tips from local experts such as Pat Dorsey, John Miller, Phil Tereyla, Nanci Morris Lyon, and Bill Betts.
- Time-tested strategies for fishing tailwaters and matching the hatch season by season - The flies and knots for success - Including contributions by regional expertsTailwaters provide extraordinary year-round fishing, but you have to know how to fish them. The author covers how tailwaters work--how cold waters released from a dam affect the water, the aquatic life, and the fish. This book has it all: the hatches, the best imitation flies to use in every circumstance, nymphing and dry-fly tactics, all illustrated with drawings by artist Dave Hall and more than 200 color photographs.
What if you could peer into the fly boxes of the guides who make their living helping people catch fish, day in and day out? With this comprehensive guide to the best patterns for Colorado rivers and reservoirs, now you can. Not only are these patterns effective for Colorado, but anglers from around the world will discover new flies for their home waters. • 600 patterns from the state's top guides and fly tiers • Complete hatch information for the state • Interviews with 20 of the state's top guides
The fishing companion to Tying Small FliesInstructions and illustrations for tricky casts, including pile, reach, parachute, and downstream-and-across reachTechniques for dead-drift nymphing, freestyle nymphing, and fishing dry-fly and in-the-film plus how to fish tiny mayflies, Tricos, Pale Morning Duns, midges, microcaddis, terrestrialsMost small-fly books concentrate on the fly patterns, but presentation and tactics are just as important as the pattern itself. Small-fly fishers must carefully observe the trout and constantly adjust their techniques as they go. Engle covers the difficulty of detecting strikes and how to best play trout caught on small flies and gives advice on the aquatic insect orders and how to fish the hatches, depending on the water and the stage of the hatch. Covered too are special considerations for rods and reels for small-fly fishing and tactics for light tippets. Engle describes fishing specific waters, including tailwaters, freestone rivers, and spring creeks.
This is a guide book for those totally new to the art of tying flies. Until now, learning flytying from a book has not only been challenging, but often the cause of great frustration, with photographs or diagrams making even the elementary techniques difficult to grasp. Step-by-step images help a reasonably proficient flytyer understand the stages in making a fly, but for the new beginner, there will always be a gap between each step-by-step image, which can be bewildering. Seeing the manual maneuvers that take place in these pages can make the different between success and failure for a beginner. The techniques you will learn in this book are the building blocks for which all successful fishing flies, even the most complex ones, are based.
“Beautiful. ... A lyrical companion to his father’s classic, A River Runs through It, chronicling their family’s history and bond with Montana’s Blackfoot River.” —Washington Post A "poetic" and "captivating" (Publishers Weekly) memoir about the power of place to shape generations, Home Waters is John N. Maclean's remarkable chronicle of his family's century-long love affair with Montana's majestic Blackfoot River, the setting for his father's classic novella, A River Runs through It. Maclean returns annually to the simple family cabin that his grandfather built by hand, still in search of the trout of a lifetime. When he hooks it at last, decades of longing promise to be fulfilled, inspiring John, reporter and author, to finally write the story he was born to tell. A book that will resonate with everyone who feels deeply rooted to a landscape, Home Waters is a portrait of a family who claimed a river, from one generation to the next, of how this family came of age in the 20th century and later as they scattered across the country, faced tragedy and success, yet were always drawn back to the waters that bound them together. Here are the true stories behind the beloved characters fictionalized in A River Runs through It, including the Reverend Maclean, the patriarch who introduced the family to fishing; Norman, who balanced a life divided between literature and the tug of the rugged West; and tragic yet luminous Paul (played by Brad Pitt in Robert Redford’s film adaptation), whose mysterious death has haunted the family and led John to investigate his uncle’s murder and reveal new details in these pages. A universal story about nature, family, and the art of fly fishing, Maclean’s memoir beautifully captures the inextricable ways our personal histories are linked to the places we come from—our home waters. Featuring twelve wood engravings by Wesley W. Bates and a map of the Blackfoot River region.
A look at the development of the sport over the past six centuries. Once limited to trout and salmon, today fly-fishing techniques are used to catch every fish species from minnows to marlin in rivers, lakes and oceans from the Amazon to the Arctic. From the many thousands of fly patterns developed over the centuries, The History of Fly-Fishing in Fifty Flies focuses on fifty iconic flies chosen to represent the evolution not only of fishing flies and fly tying but also the sport itself. Filled with illustrations and photographs of the flies (the fifty are just the starting point—more than 200 flies are mentioned or shown in the book), as well as profiles of key characters, The History of Fly-Fishing in Fifty Flies charts the growth and diversification of this fascinating sport from the fifteenth century to the present day and its spread from Britain, Europe and Japan to North and South America, Australia and New Zealand, and now to every country in the world. The evolution of fly-fishing tackle—rods, reels, lines and hooks—is also covered in a series of essays spread throughout the book. Praise for The History of Fly-Fishing in Fifty Flies “A delightful ramble along the stream of fishing history.” —Star Tribune “This glorious book of lures will get you itching for a new toy, a new boat, a new rod—anything to experience the relaxation of this old hobby.” —Foreword Reviews
